rcumstances, how long they may remain in
those vats before they become perfectly bright. When bright, this beer
is sent out to the publicans, for their _entire_ beer, and there is
sometimes a small quantity of mild beer mixed with it."

The present entire beer, therefore, is a very heterogeneous mixture,
composed of all the waste and spoiled beer of the publicans--the bottoms
of butts--the leavings of the pots--the drippings of the machines for
drawing the beer--the remnants of beer that lay in the leaden pipes of
the brewery, with a portion of brown stout, bottling beer, and mild
beer.

The old or _entire_ beer we have examined, as obtained from Messrs.
Barclay's, and other eminent London brewers, is unquestionably a good
compound; but it does no longer appear to be necessary, among fraudulent
brewers, to brew beer on purpose for keeping, or to keep it twelve or
eighteen months. A more easy, expeditious, and economical method has
been discovered to convert any sort of beer into entire beer, merely by
the admixture of a portion of sulphuric acid. An imitation of the age of
eighteen months is thus produced in an instant. This process is
technically called to bring beer _forward_, or to make it _hard_.

The practice is a bad one. The genuine, old, or entire beer, of the
honest brewer, is quite a different compound; it has a rich, generous,
full-bodied taste, without being acid, and a vinous odour: but it may,
perhaps, not be generally known that this kind of beer always affords a
less proportion of alcohol than is produced from mild beer. The practice
of bringing beer _forward_, it is to be understood, is resorted to only
by fraudulent brewers.[69]

If, on the contrary, the brewer has too large a stock of old beer on his
hands, recourse is had to an opposite practice of converting stale,
half-spoiled, or sour beer, into mild beer, by the simple admixture of
an alkali, or an alkaline earth. Oyster-shell powder and subcarbonate of
potash, or soda, are usually employed for that purpose. These substances
neutralise the excess of acid, and render sour beer somewhat palatable.
By this process the beer becomes very liable to spoil.

It is the worst expedient that the brewer can practise: the beer thus
rendered _mild_, soon loses its vinous taste; it becomes vapid; and
speedily assumes a muddy grey colour, and an exceedingly disagreeable
taste.

These sophistications may be considered, at first, as minor crimes
practised b